We said this a couple of years ago and again a few months ago, and we got feedback from some of our readers that it would never happen. Well, all we can say to that now is…don’t doubt us again. Because Mardi Gras in New Orleans is just about gone, and all it’s going to take to finish it off is one or two of the krewes recognizing the inevitable and moving their operations to Jefferson Parish.
They may not want to do it, but eventually you don’t have a choice. And eventually looks a lot like now.
Partygoers looking forward to this upcoming Mardi Gras season could possibly be in for a massive disappointment due to a critical shortage of important city employees.
“If we don’t have adequate police, it could mean that there will be no Mardi Gras—and that’s a fact,” said New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell said at a town hall meeting Thursday night, according to WGNO. “If our officers cannot be safe, then there’s no way that our city will be safe.”
Staffing issues don’t stop at the police department: according to the New Orleans EMS Director, Dr. Meg Marino, EMS is “currently operating with 60% of our current staffing. I want you to think about that for a minute, 60 percent of the number of EMS providers to make the city safe and healthy.”
You could argue, if you want, that this is really just an irresponsible off-the-cuff statement by Cantrell. That wouldn’t be an unreasonable take; just look at the mess she made over the prospect of a Target location opening in New Orleans East, for example.
Except the fundamentals of the situation support Cantrell’s alarmism. Cops and EMS personnel in New Orleans are an endangered species, because nobody wants to work for that political leadership. Not in the conditions being imposed on them.
And eventually you get to the point where you don’t have a functioning city and can no longer stage large events like Mardi Gras.
We said this, and some of you laughed it off. It’s up to Jefferson Parish to save Mardi Gras. Jefferson needs to make a plan to host the big parades like Endymion and Bacchus, maybe on a route from Ochsner Hospital or thereabouts to Elmwood Shopping Center, and to start a beautification plan to make that route as nice as it can be.
Advertisement
Because the day is coming when Cantrell, or whatever Soros-funded dunce succeeds her, will throw in the towel on Mardi Gras. It’s too hard to do the things a city must do to put on events like that, and Mardi Gras is mostly for white out-of-towners anyway, after all. You’ll probably start hearing about Mardi Gras’ racist roots and how it’s an evil tradition that must be abolished – just like the cannons at Washington Artillery Park were abolished.
So the question is, do you have a big Mardi Gras in Jefferson Parish which sustains the tourist trade in the New Orleans metro area, or do you simply let the whole thing wither away and die?
Now is the time when you’ve got to have some leadership. It’s not a time for caretaking. Managed decline has taken New Orleans to a point of no return and now somebody has to step up and salvage the city’s traditions. And it can’t be someone from the city, because the city is dead.
It has to be Jefferson. Otherwise Cantrell’s attempted murder of Mardi Gras will become the real thing.
Advertisement
Advertisement